Today, I was in two places at once. I participated in the Offener IT Gipfel of Germany’s green party where I had been invited to give a talk on open source and to participate in a panel moderated by a member of the German national parliament.

I was also present at the Hochsprung Award ceremonies by way of a video recording where we received first prize for our Startupinformatik concept for creating student startups from our computer science Master program.

I would usually would have chosen to be in Erlangen to receive the award in person, however, I had long been announced in the Offener IT Gipfel program and could not withdraw, after the Hochsprung-Awards had been decided. My students represented me well.

IEEE Computer asked me about some quotes for promoting my recent article on developer careers, to be used on their social media channels. Naturally, I had a field day. A brainstorm ensued. Here are some of the better ones I suggested to them:

A progress report towards an open source foundation for the energy sector (in German) that I initiated and am currently guiding. The article dates back to February already, but I got a hold of it only now.

If you have run into me recently, I may have bugged you with the following question:

Given the rapid pace of development in medical technology, I expect my generation to live to 100 years of age. A child being born today may live to the age of 250 years of age. Under this assumption, what health issues do I need to watch out for most to achieve that age?

I have little scientific fact to backup the assumption; it is based solely on my perception of the acceleration in medical technology today. Once you make the assumption that the average life span may be growing rapidly, you start to wonder how to take advantage of it. Or, put another way: What are the parts of your body should you be caring for most?

For example, I see three layers:

Mechanical stuff. If you have a bad knee, I expect that this will be fully fixable within the next 10-20 years or so. It seems to me to be a purely mechanical issue.

Systemic stuff. More difficult to fix, if anything goes wrong, are systemic issues, for example, arthritis or a bad lung. It is not clear to me how easily this can be fixed.

The brain. At the high end sits the brain. Things that can go wrong are illnesses like Alzheimer or Parkinson, but also loss of energy to live. How to avoid those?

These are all hypotheses, but the question is real. What are the most difficult things for medical technology to tackle and how to avoid that they’l become a problem once we are starting to live longer and longer lives?

I’m a member of both organizations and a member of the board of the OSBF though I was not involved with the drawn-out negotiations. I very much welcome the reunification (and it is a reunification after a split many years ago); as a fellow board member wrote to me: “Dirk, you are getting your Christmas wish fulfilled.” (Earlier this year, I had complained that “All I want for Christmas is that the People’s Front of Judea will finally merge with the Judean People’s Front and open its Berlin office. There is a lot of work to be done.”) The new name has not been announced yet though I think it will be “Open Source Business Foundation”.

Congratulations to Peter Ganten (OSBA) and Richard Seibt (OSBF) and the many others who made it happen!

Bearing Point Consulting just published a study on the use of open source software in the automotive industry. It shows how open source is on the rise, no surprise. Martin Helmreich, a student of mine, did most of the work, and I guided study conception and evaluation. Here are links to the German version and the English version.